Yucatán Women Build Business With Local Recipes

El Roble Agrícola, Yucatán — Residents of the El Roble Agrícola neighborhood, in southern Mérida, Yucatán, have found a way to foster self-employment and develop a sustainable economy through traditional cuisine: they produce goods using local ingredients that they harvest themselves. This collective has also generated an improvement in the community, which, due to its distance from the city center, lacks basic services and opportunities to increase its income.

“You feel proud to contribute something to the household. Before, each woman was always dedicated to her home, and you would see that the husband's salary wasn't enough and you had to stretch it. So, doing this changes our lives completely because it is an extra that comes into our families,” explained Araceli Hernández, originally from Campeche, who arrived in the state of Yucatán 18 years ago.

Various social organizations have supported them in commercializing their products, which include a variety of macha salsas, black habanero salsa, cream of xcatic chili, cream of eggplant, and artisanal marmalades of papaya with cinnamon, pineapple with cinnamon, apple with cinnamon, and mango.

Each recipe emerges from collective processes of training, technical strengthening, and support, which promote responsible and sustainable practices for the women. The organizations Interculturalidad, Salud y Derechos and Fundación Sofía have been advising them for four years.

“We came with the idea of having an entrepreneurship, a business so that we could produce something and it would benefit us economically. I didn't know how to get a little more money; I didn't know how to make salsas or marmalades, and since we started with this, I feel part of a project and I feel useful to my family and my community,” said Rosa Elena, originally from the Yucatecan municipality of Opichén.